In Jon Cruz’s thought-provoking film, PanoptiCo, we’re presented with an animated advertisement for a fictional corporation. This corporation, it seems, has infiltrated jails, schools and doctor’s offices, among other places. The idea of the panopticon was initially conceived by the Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham in in the 18th century and later brought to prominence by the French philosopher Michel Foucault in the 20th century. The original idea involved building a specialized prison, built in such a way that one guard would be able to watch each inmate without the inmates knowing when they were being watched. In this way, prisoners would theoretically always be on their best behaviour because they would always feel the eyes of the guard on them without actually knowing if the guard were there. While no such building was ever built, the principle behind it is, according to the film, alive and well today.
With surveillance cameras everywhere in many cities and neighbourhoods, and so much of our lives being tracked digitally, it’s hard not to feel like we’re always being watched by either the state or corporations. The reasons for this widespread surveillance are twofold. On the one hand, the state claims that it’s watching us for the sake of our own safety; safety from crime primarily, but also more recently, safety from disease. Corporations monitor everything we do, and every keystroke we take, for the sake of economic profit. That, at least, is the simple version of the story.
On the face of it, it isn’t entirely pleasant to think that we have very little privacy because of the supposed needs of the police or the economic imperative of big tech. But Cross’ film subtly takes this concern further into Foucault’s territory. The most intriguing thing about the film is not the description of the panopticon, but the suggestion that it is already at work everywhere, and, most importantly, that it is essential if we want to continue to ‘live in paradise.’ This raises the question – what exactly is meant here by paradise and why do we need the panopticon to ensure we continue living in it? My sense is that this goes deeper than protecting us from muggers or creating a wealthy society that is able to perfectly target its advertising efforts. For Foucault, the panopticon was more about society’s ability to enforce norms. We are, according to Foucault, and, I believe, this film, being trained like lab rats to behave in certain ways through the discipline of constant surveillance. And we’re being told that we should be happy about it because we’re living in the richest and freest society even known.
The 1950s era style of the animation makes us feel like we’re being taken care of by a benevolent father straight out of Leave it to Beaver. He’s taking care of us and we don’t have to worry about a thing and we can just kick back and laze on the beach all day.
The film is all of two minutes long, but is sharp as a tack in making its point. It explains a complicated subject clearly and provides the right tone of quiet menace behind a cheerful exterior. Only time will tell if the panopticon increases its power with the Covid-19 pandemic. In China, for example, the state made use of highly advanced artificial intelligence and a vast surveillance system to carry out contact tracing in a way that, at the moment, would not be possible in the west. It remains to be seen how willing the general populations of North America and Europe are to allow their governments to use these techniques in the future for the sake of public health. The real issue, though, is whether governments will draw the line at preventing future pandemics or whether they will find new and more nefarious applications for future technology.
PanoptiCo has been an official selection of the SoCal Film Awards and received honorable mention in the Phoenix Monthly Short Film Festival. Jon Cruz, who wrote and animated the short, studied visual arts and film studies at California State University San Marcos. His first short, Orfeo, was screened at the Culver City Film Festival in 2017, and he works as a videographer on Healthy Haven Live in San Diego.
By: Darida Rose
© 2021. UniversalCinema Mag.